Effects of Swedish massage on the improvement of mood disorders in women with breast cancer undergoing radiotherapy

Background: Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, and the second leading cause of cancer deaths. The detection and treatment of this cancer may create mental pressure and lower mood levels, causing anxiety, depression, stress, and pain for the patients. Objectives: The aim of this study was to determine the effects of Swedish massage on mood disorders in breast cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy at the cancer institute of the Imam Khomeini hospital at the Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Patients and Methods: This study consisted of a clinical trial including 100 patients with breast cancer. The participants were chosen randomly, with their consent, by the use of polling, to be included in the intervention group (which received a Swedish massage three times a week, for 30 minutes, over five weeks) and control group (which received routine care). At the beginning of the intervention and after 5 weeks, the mood disorders of the patients, including anger, anxiety, depression, and any positive affect, were assessed using the affective control scale (ACS) questionnaire. Results: Before the intervention, there was no significant difference in the average of the overall scale between the intervention and control groups in the subscales of anger, anxiety, depression, and positive affect (P = 0.469). The average of the overall scale in the Swedish massage group decreased from 3.52±0.65 to 2.42±0.76 when compared to the pre-intervention conditions, and to (P < 0.001) after the intervention. Moreover, the values for the control group were 3.41±0.94 for the pre-intervention and 3.38±0.9 after the intervention (P = 0.620). Conclusions: When compared to the control group, the Swedish massage showed an improvement in the mood disorders of women with breast cancer. © 2016, Iranian Red Crescent Medical Journal

M-machine, no-wait flowshop scheduling with sequence dependent setup times and truncated learning function to minimize the makespan.

Recently, learning effects have been studied as an interesting topic for scheduling problems, however, most researches have considered single or two-machine settings. Moreover, learning factor has been considered for job times instead of setup times and the same learning effect has been used for all machines. This paper studies the m-machine no-wait flowshop scheduling problem considering truncated learning effect in no-wait flowshop environment. In this problem, setup time is a function of job position in the sequence with a learning truncation parameter and each machine has its own learning effect. In this paper, a mixed integer linear programming is proposed for the problem to solve such problem. This problem is NP-hard so an improved genetic algorithm (GA) and a simulated annealing (SA) algorithm are developed to find near optimal solutions. The accuracy and efficiency of the proposed procedures are tested against different criteria on various instances. Numerical experiments approve that SA outperforms in most instances

Effect of lymphedema self-management group-based education compared with social network-based education on quality of life and fear of cancer recurrence in women with breast cancer: a randomized controlled clinical trial

Background: Breast cancer-related lymphedema (BCRL) and its associated symptoms harm the quality of life (QoL) of cancer survivors and can stimulate fear of cancer recurrence (FCR). Self-management education for lymphedema has been introduced as an effective method in controlling FCR. This study investigates the effect of lymphedema group-based education compared to the social network-based and control group on QoL and FCR in breast cancer patients. Methods: This three-arm clinical trial studied 105 patients with breast cancer-related lymphedema referred to SeyedKhandan rehabilitation center. Sampling was done by random allocation method in blocks of 3 with 35 subjects in each group. All subjects received routine lymphedema treatments. The group-based education (GE) and social network-based education (SNE) groups received self-management education in the clinic and Telegram� messenger channel, respectively. Impairment in QoL and mean score of FCR were assessed before, immediately after, and three months after the intervention by using the Persian version of Lymphedema Life Impact Scale (LLIS) and Fear of Progression Questionnaire-Short Form (FoPQ-SF), respectively. Mixed-model ANOVA was applied for statistical analysis. Results: There was a significant time effect on total LLIS (P = 0.007), psychosocial (P = 0.038) and functional (P = 0.024) subscale changes in three groups of study. Interaction between the main effect of group and time on psychosocial subscale changes was statistically significant (P = 0.017). The multicomparison results illustrated that the main effect of time, the main effect of group, and interaction of them on the mean score of FCR were P = 0.084, P = 0.380, and P = 0.568, respectively. Conclusion: Despite no significant reduction in the FCR score, results showed the improvement of most QoL aspects after three months of intervention. Although the social network-based education method was effective, the group-based education method was more beneficial. Applying these educational methods in lymphedema treatment protocols needs cost-effectiveness studies. Trial registration: This study was registered at the Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials (IRCT2017052834176N1). © 2020, The Author(s)

Programmable Edge-to-Cloud Virtualization for 5G Media Industry: The 5G-MEDIA Approach

To ensure high Quality of Experience (QoE) for end users, many media applications require significant quantities of computing and network resources, making their realization challenging in resource constrained environments. In this paper, we present the approach of the 5G-MEDIA project, providing an integrated programmable service platform for the development, design and operations of media applications in 5G networks, facilitating media service management across the service life cycle. The platform offers tools to service developers for efficient development, testing and continuous correction of services. One step further, it provides a service virtualization platform offering horizontal services, such as a Media Service Catalogue and accounting services, as well as optimization mechanisms to flexibly adapt service operations to dynamic conditions with efficient use of infrastructure resources. The paper outlines three use cases where the platform was tested and validated

Predicting no-show medical appointments using machine learning

Health care centers face many issues due to the limited availability of resources, such as funds, equipment, beds, physicians, and nurses. Appointment absences lead to a waste of hospital resources as well as endangering patient health. This fact makes unattended medi- cal appointments both socially expensive and economically costly. This research aimed to build a predictive model to identify whether an appointment would be a no-show or not in order to reduce its consequences. This paper proposes a multi-stage framework to build an accurate predictor that also tackles the imbalanced property that the data exhibits. The first stage includes dimensionality reduction to compress the data into its most important components. The second stage deals with the imbalanced nature of the data. Different machine learning algorithms were used to build the classifiers in the third stage. Various evaluation metrics are also discussed and an evaluation scheme that fits the problem at hand is described. The work presented in this paper will help decision makers at health care centers to implement effective strategies to reduce the number of no-shows

Corneal confocal microscopy detects a reduction in corneal endothelial cells and nerve fibres in patients with acute ischemic stroke

YesEndothelial dysfunction and damage underlie cerebrovascular disease and ischemic stroke. We undertook corneal confocal microscopy (CCM) to quantify corneal endothelial cell and nerve morphology in 146 patients with an acute ischemic stroke and 18 age-matched healthy control participants. Corneal endothelial cell density was lower (P<0.001) and endothelial cell area (P<0.001) and perimeter (P<0.001) were higher, whilst corneal nerve fbre density (P<0.001), corneal nerve branch density (P<0.001) and corneal nerve fbre length (P=0.001) were lower in patients with acute ischemic stroke compared to controls. Corneal endothelial cell density, cell area and cell perimeter correlated with corneal nerve fber density (P=0.033, P=0.014, P=0.011) and length (P=0.017, P=0.013, P=0.008), respectively. Multiple linear regression analysis showed a signifcant independent association between corneal endothelial cell density, area and perimeter with acute ischemic stroke and triglycerides. CCM is a rapid non-invasive ophthalmic imaging technique, which could be used to identify patients at risk of acute ischemic stroke.Qatar National Research Fund Grant BMRP2003865

Effect of COVID-19 medications on corrected QT interval and induction of torsade de pointes: Results of a multicenter national survey

Background: There are some data showing that repurposed drugs used for the Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) have potential to increase the risk of QTc prolongation and torsade de pointes (TdP), and these arrhythmic side effects have not been adequately addressed in COVID-19 patients treated with these repurposed medications. Methods: This is the prospective study of 2403 patients hospitalised at 13 hospitals within the COVID-19 epicentres of the Iran. These patients were treated with chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir/ritonavir, atazanavir/ritonavir, oseltamivir, favipiravir and remdesivir alone or in combination with azithromycin. The primary outcome of the study was incidence of critical QTc prolongation, and secondary outcomes were incidences of TdP and death. Results: Of the 2403 patients, 2365 met inclusion criteria. The primary outcome of QTc � 500 ms and �QTc � 60 ms was observed in 11.2 and 17.6 of the patients, respectively. The secondary outcomes of TdP and death were reported in 0.38 and 9.8 of the patients, respectively. The risk of critical QT prolongation increased in the presence of female gender, history of heart failure, treatment with hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin combination therapy, simultaneous furosemide or beta-blocker therapy and acute renal or hepatic dysfunction. However, the risk of TdP was predicted by treatment with lopinavir-ritonavir, simultaneous amiodarone or furosemide administration and hypokalaemia during treatment. Conclusion: This cohort showed significant QTc prolongation with all COVID-19 medications studied, however, life-threatening arrhythmia of TdP occurred rarely. Among the repurposed drugs studied, hydroxychloroquine or lopinavir-ritonavir alone or in combination with azithromycin clearly demonstrated to increase the risk of critical QT prolongation and/or TdP. © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

The relationship between quality of labor and delivery care with the delivery unit managers' leadership style

Nowadays maternal and infant health promotionis part of every country's development goals. One of the best strategies to achieve this main goal is the quality of labor and delivery cares provided by the hospitals; since the recognition of the present status can help us provide appropriate strategies to improve the quality of the services. Since the midwifery staff, as the health system specialists, play the most important and influential role in quality promotion and thus have their own needs and expectations in the workplace. Meeting the aforementioned needs and expectations calls for applying both knowledge and intelligence in management. The managers' leadership style can affect the promotion of staff performance and it can also help promote the quality of the care provided for the patients. The present study aimed at finding the relationship between labor and delivery cares with the managers' leadership style in healthcare centers covered by Alborz University of Medical Sciences in 2016. The present study is a descriptive-correlational one. The statistical population and sample were the midwives working at the delivery units of the hospitals covered b Alborz University of Medical Sciences. Data collection tool was the tool used for surveying the quality of labor and delivery cares as well as multi-factor leadership questionnaire (MLQ). The questionnaire's validity with its content validity and its reliability with Cronbach's coefficient alpha was measured 0.85 for the leadership style and 0.87 for labor and delivery cares. The data collected was analyzed using SPSS version 22. According to 49.6 of the midwifery staff, the leadership style of the delivery unit managers was a transformational one. The quality of labor and delivery cares was favorable as being 77.3. The mean of the quality of labor and delivery cares was higher in transformational leadership and a significant relationship was observed between leadership style and the quality of labor and delivery cares (P-Value < 0.001)